LOVE-Shirt LED

In this tutorial i am gonna show you, how you turn your shirt into a Led eye catcher.

This shirt was created in front of a contest and it shows how simple it is to make something boring

getting awesome.

In this contest you have to put the word "LOVE" in a selfmade sewing/ crafted object.

The Title was "what do you Love?" so you have to put instead the "O" a picture, a figure, whatever you can imagine what you Love.

On my shirt stand the O for the e-textiles which are demonstrated with this leds.

Step 1: First Step: the Tools

You will need the following things (some tools are not listed in the pictures):

- a shirt with a front pocket

- some leds

- different textiles for the letters

- scissor

- sewing machine with yarn

- textile marker

- conductive thread or used cables from broken electronic products

- some needles

- a 9 volt battery and 2 paper clips

- round pliers

- a hot glue gun

- soldering station

So let us get started

Step 2: Second Step: Draw the Letters and Sewing It on the Shirt

Draw the letters

In the first letter you see a piece of textile i have drawed the letter V.

I used the printed demand to draw the letter as good as possible by hand.

The textile marker are great, because you can draw very fast a line and see the result

very good on the textileground.

Sewing the letters

I used a zigzag pattern to sewing along the line i have drawed with the marker.

After this i have cut out around the part i do not need.

Sewing on the shirt

Use the straight stitch to get the characters on the shirt.

You can use some needles to fix the letters for a better sewing.

Controlling

At the end it should looking like on the last picture.

Step 3: Third Step: Make the O

Before start

Before you can start to set the leds you have to turn the breast pocket as seen on the first picture.

The led setting

Now you can penetrate the leds through the shirt but make sure that all cathodes are in the inner circle or in the outer circle, it is up to you but make sure every light has the same direction.

To connect the ends correct you can start to bend the cathodes (or anodes) with a round pliers.

Connect the ends

I used a conductive yarn to fix the contacts. You do not have a special technic, you can make a knot with the needle and going to the other led

tip:

you can use your soldering machine to close the ends better to avoid that the yarn is falling of

Fix the yarn

To pretend that the yarn of the two contacts are crossing and do not light i have putted some hot glue

on the yarn and pressed it on the shirt to fix it.

This is a fast and cheap way to solve this problem (in my eyes)

Step 4: Last Step: Let It Shine

At the end you can turn the breast pocket back and look at your almost finished shirt.

Connect the ends

Now you have to use the paper clips. Make a knot at the end of the electric conductive thread to become

a connection between the 9V-Battery and the lights.

You can hide the Battery inside of the breast pocket.

Note: I forgot to install a resistor so some of the lights burned out :(

And thats it,i hope you can understand my instruction to build your own LED-LOVE Shirt

But there is one more...